Main menu

Motor City food trucks, part three: The taco truck

November 10, 2011

Share

Facebook

Tweet

Pinterest

Email

El Guapo Grill

In this installment of our look at Detroit's food trucks, we profile El Guapo Grill, which calls an old GMC catering van its home.

Douglas Runyon of El Guapo Grill is not new to the food business, having worked for chefs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Michael Mina in Las Vegas and Detroit before opening his current venture, El Guapo Grill, with partner Anthony Curis.

Last May, the pair tracked down a former catering truck--a 1995 GMC P30 van with body and chassis by Grumman Olsen--and has since been operating mainly out of a lot in downtown Detroit's Greektown neighborhood.

Already outfitted with a commercial kitchen by Wyss, a catering-truck manufacturing company, the truck needed cosmetic changes and some fun accessories. The company wrapped the outside, installed tinted windows and swapped out the tanks of hot coffee for vats of queso dip. The truck has televisions that show the menu or live TV and a speaker system to entertain the crowd.

Under the hood, the van has a 5.7-liter engine, while the inside is fully outfitted with a commercial kitchen, including a double fryer for fresh tortilla chips and a 36-inch flat-top grill to cook the chorizo or tender steak the El Guapo crew stuffs inside tacos and burritos.

Wyss makes a business of building these eateries, taking empty delivery trucks and filling them with all of the necessary cooking equipment. The company has seen a decline in orders of traditional catering trucks, and, since 2008, an uptick in more specialized, gourmet-food trucks.

“The concept of the catering truck has changed because now we are basically making bricks-and-mortar kitchens inside of a truck,” said owner Mike Wyss. While before they constructed a lot of industrial trucks made to feed factory workers with a basic fryer, grill and steam table, now they are getting more specialized requests.